


Chaos and Cosmos

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Gen, M/M, Sky Factory AU, minecraft au, my usual brand of is this platonic? romantic? who knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24071374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The ancients had two prevailing theories on the nature of the Universe. Chaos — the idea that the Universe exists without rhyme or reason — and Cosmos — the idea that law and order underlies every facet of creation. Which theory held true, no one could say. Who would know? The gods? Yeah, right.
Relationships: Gavin Free/Ryan Haywood
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Chaos and Cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> It is the year 2020 and I am still writing skyfac aus. I actually wrote the first part in 2019 and liked it a lot but didn't have an actual plot to attach to it until now. I use the term 'plot' very loosely here. This is mostly an excuse to worldbuild and write soft-ass narration. Enjoy.

The world started quietly. At the beginning of the day — it wasn't morning, morning didn't exist yet — six beings met under an oak tree. It was the first tree. It was the first thing at all, really. The ground was not yet ground, not rich like soil, not silky like sand, but simply substance. The sky was slate gray, not a touch warm, not a touch cold, not dark enough for the stars to shine — if the stars existed at all yet — and not bright enough to cast shadows. Everything simply _was_ , and was nothing more. Everything except for the tree and the six beings who met under it.

They stood beneath the boughs. It's hard to say where they came from or what they were before or what they were now. It isn't right to say they spoke — again, even language was not as we know it — but if they had spoken, they would've said something like this.

"We should build," said the first.

"Yes," the rest agreed.

No one questioned why they should build. It was not in their nature to care. They just knew, looking into that vast nothing, that that was what they should do.

"This tree. There should be more like it," said one, and in his mind were all the trees and fields and fruits of the world.

"The earth could be filled," said another, speaking the beginnings of ores and jewels into existence.

"There should be more color," said the next, and the idea of flowers and beauty were born in that moment.

"What else does this world need?" asked the first.

The last two, who had not yet said anything, spoke at the same time.

"It needs order."

"It needs chaos."

There was silence. The two stared, not with eyes — they didn't have those — but in the sense that they focused on each other's existence. There was no malice, just a tension that neither of them could fully understand, for it was the first conflict of the new world and they did not know how to address it. They did not yet understand how another mind could think differently than their own. They would learn, eventually, but now they stayed silent and stared.

Finally, the first said, "We should build."

"Yes," the rest agreed.

And so they parted and began to build.

* * *

The six built the world by hand — or something like that. It is not enough to say they willed the world into existence — it was a much more involved process.

To make a mountain, you first had to ask, "Well, what is a mountain made of?" A mountain is made of stone, you would answer, but then what is stone made of? A stone is made of dirt, pressed together, you would answer, but what is dirt made of? Grains of dust, and dust was made of atoms, and atoms were made of electrons and neutrons and protons, and those were made of quarks and gluons and leptons. But what was a quark made of? And what was the thing a quark was made of, made of? Keep asking and eventually you will reach the very unit of creation — a speck on a speck on a speck on a speck on a thousand more specks — and this was the scale the world was built on. Deserts were made grain by grain, forests planted one seed at a time, the ocean began with a single drop.

It was a slow process, though it sped up as time went on. Once one tree was made, they scattered their own seeds and the new trees would build themselves. Once ground and ice were made, the glaciers carved out rivers and lakes on their own. A slow process still, but the six had an eternity, and an eternity is a very, very long time.

The six had names, but not any that we can comprehend, so we will call them by plain names instead. They all took to different work. The first, Geoff, built at a leisurely pace. His calling would come later, in the living, breathing things of the earth, but even then he still built slow and simple. He lived near the oak tree, as they all did, though the first tree had long since rotted away, replaced by a thousand more just like it along with an ash-faced mountain rising where it once stood. Geoff had a little fenced off area at the foot of the mountain, where he guarded his strangest and most spectacular creatures — creatures with stone for skin, glass feathers, and diamond beaks.

Jack, the one who spoke of trees, planted the first forests by hand. Nearly every fruit, grain, vegetable, sprout you could name, Jack was the one who created it and tended to it. On the outskirts of the forest, there stood a field where he grew every plant imaginable, where the crops were always ripe and never dared to wither.

The one who spoke of the earth, Jeremy, took to metal. Early on, while the others were busy creating mere ground, Jeremy hid treasures between the soil and stone — veins of gold, pockets of oil, caves of crystal, quartz and diamond. On the mountainside, Jeremy had a forge of black rock which they say could melt any metal into any shape — and some say he kept darker things buried deep inside the mountain, carved stones and red blades.

Hidden in the forest was a clearing, where a carpet of flowers bloomed so bright they might've glowed, some in hues our eyes would be incapable of seeing. Michael, the one who spoke of color, did most of his work there. He painted the first flowers. Made trees bloom in summer. Rainbows form in rain. The little beauties of the world traced back to him, for he spent so much time watching the world in those early days that he decided it might as well be easy on the eye.

Ryan lived inside the mountain. He was a creator more than anyone. He built dirt and stone and iron and sand with unimaginable efficiency, eventually even building machines to do it for him. He dug out and filled the inside of the mountain with his inventions until it had silver veins, steel lungs and an iron heart, steam pouring out the top like a volcano. It was his workshop, and in it you could find anything, build anything. When the others were ever in need, it was Ryan and his machines they would turn to. 

He was the one who spoke of order, and he made everything in his grasp bend to that. Every chime, whistle and hum in his workshop kept to a tick-tick-tick beat. He rearranged the forest around the mountain to grow in a grid pattern, all a few feet apart, never touching. Every tree stood straight as an arrow, their trunks completely smooth. Count them, and you'd find every tree had the same number of branches, the same number of leaves, maybe even the same number of atoms. Ryan wanted order, and he made everything so.

Gavin, the one who spoke of chaos, always thought it was silly. An ugly, pointless effort, and he told Ryan so on many occasions. 

"Why do you bother with this eyesore?" he would say, looking down from the workshop to the trees below.

Ryan would answer without looking up from his machines. "Is there something wrong with it?"

"It's not the way the world works."

"We're gods. We choose the way the world works."

"Well, I'm not a fan of your choices."

Jeremy, or whoever else was in the workshop at the time, would shrink away. They had no desire to be caught in the crossfire of those two, and they were indeed quite prone to crossfire.

Their first argument under the oak tree had foreshadowed eons of disagreement. There was simply something in the fabric of their beings that wasn't compatible — like two puzzle pieces from different pictures. No matter how hard you pushed, they would never align. Ryan won many of their disagreements. Despite everything, Ryan was a brilliant creator and the others trusted him in a way they never did with Gavin — not that Gavin blamed them. While Ryan built mountains and machines, Gavin made dirt and water, and poorly at that. Too distracted, too restless, too clumsy. He struggled to find his own calling, separate from the others, and thus Ryan ruled much of this world they'd created. His creed of order and instruction was weaved deep into the earth. Anything Gavin did therefore became a rebellion.

One of his few darling creations was weather. Every downpour, tradewind, and hailstorm began their chaotic journeys with him. It's no wonder even today that weather is still largely unpredictable, prone to ruin a ballgame or suntan despite our meteorologists' best forecasts. As you can imagine, this did nothing to make Ryan fond of him. It didn't help that whenever Gavin found himself in Ryan's forest, trees would suddenly grow blue leaves, or twist their branches into a heart, or rise and walk five steps out of line. It was all in good fun, he would say, but Ryan never appreciated these gifts. 

When the continents were being cut into shape — they fought. When they chose the colors of the seas and sands — they fought. When it was time to light the bare sky — oh, that was the fight to end them all. 

For the longest time, the sky was the same as it was on the day the world was born — slate gray with no warmth or depth, unfinished, like drywall with no paint or paper. They'd been too busy building the ground beneath them that the sky was left as an afterthought. Now with the earth nearing completion, the sky yearned for substance, and the gods, as was their duty, answered.

It was Ryan who created the moon, though it was not like our moon today. The moon was pure white, no craters or valleys, just a flat circle pasted on the sky. It did not move. It did not dance its phases — from crescent to full to crescent — and it never rose or fell. It gave a constant pale light, just enough to see by and work by, but dim enough to keep the world still and sedated. A new tool in his ever present need for order. When the stars appeared, Ryan arranged them into neat lines just like his trees, and so the sky was made.

Gavin thought it was silly and he told Ryan so.

"This sky of yours is a bore," he said as Ryan toiled in his workshop.

"How so?"

"It just sits there.

"Should it be doing something more?"

Gavin thought about this. "It could."

"'It could.'" Ryan echoed, a hint of mocking. Gavin drew taut, like a bow. They fought often, yes, but for the most part there was only jest in it. Now, there was a sharper edge. "Maybe you could do more."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means maybe you should stop worrying about my creations and take a look at your own. Is it so hard to see that if you reigned yourself in, you might actually be useful?"

Gavin snapped back. "Oh, you think you're so much better? Trying to control every inch of this world with no regard for the creatures living in it? Thinking all would be better if only you had your way?"

"Wouldn't it be?"

"If that sky of yours is any indication, no, it wouldn't be."

"It's not like you could create something better."

Those words sparked a fire in Gavin's being, a raging ball of flame and gold. Gavin had never created anything to rival Ryan's inventions. All he could do were his little antics and games which though annoying, amounted to throwing pebbles at a fortress. Could he create something better? Had he ever even tried? He didn't know — eons of existence gets muddled up in your head sometimes — but he did know this: he wanted to. By the gods, he wanted to. More than anything else, he wanted to prove Ryan wrong.

That day — and it was day, finally — Gavin created his greatest rebellion: the Sun.


End file.
